


Of All Sad Words

by showgirlsteve



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Soulmates, Tumblr Prompt, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 00:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3361460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showgirlsteve/pseuds/showgirlsteve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people don't have Words, Peggy knows. Her mother explains that the sentence on Peggy's forearm will be the last her soulmate says to her. She's lucky to have a soulmate. Soulmates are a gift.</p><p>“Poor guy,” her cousins tease. “Has to be stuck with bossy Peggy for a soulmate, isn’t even allowed to finish his last sentence to her.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of All Sad Words

**Author's Note:**

> “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”  
> ― John Greenleaf Whittier

Peggy Carter is seven years old, she has been forced into a fancy dress for a family reunion, and her cousin Donald is bothering her something awful.

“Come on, _Margaret_ , I heard your mum talking to mine. We all know you have Words. Show us.”

Words, Mum said, were private things. They were special, private things that let someone know that there was someone out there just for them. Not everyone gets Words. Mum looked a bit sad when she explained it, but Peggy held her head high and was proud. There was someone out there _just for Peggy_ , and the script on her forearm proved it. Words were private, but her cousins _were_ family, after all, so maybe it was alright to show them.

“Alright, but you have to promise not to tell anyone, Donald, I mean it,” she says, rolling up her right sleeve. Helen and Alice, only a few years older than Peggy, stop gossiping and turn away from the corner they found to escape the younger cousins. Charles looks up from his book.

“I’d hate to step on your,” reads Donald. “Hate to step on your what? Where’s the rest of it?”

“That’s the whole thing,” Peggy says. Donald, she decides, must be jealous. She would say something about his lack of Words, but Dad made her promise to stay ladylike and to be nice to her cousins this year.

“It’s not even a whole sentence, Peggy,” says Charles. “What, do you interrupt him or something?”

“Poor guy,” says Helen. “Has to be stuck with bossy Peggy for a soulmate, isn’t even allowed to finish his last sentence to her.” Alice giggles behind her hand.

Helen, Peggy tells herself, is also jealous. So is Alice.

Later, when she gets into trouble for pushing Charles into the pond, Peggy remembers that Helen said _last sentence_ , and interrupts her mother’s tirade to ask what she meant. (Maybe Helen had a point about interruptions, after all.) Her mother gets sad again, like she did the first time she explained the Words. This time, she tells Peggy that the Words on her arm are the very last words her soulmate will say to her.

“You mean I’ll only know who they are when they’re gone?” How awful. No wonder Mum looked sad.

“You’ll be in love, my dear. Of course you’ll know before then. Your Words, they just let you know to look for him.”

Well, Peggy decides, that’s alright then.

* * *

 

Steve Rogers is nineteen years old and his knuckles are bleeding.

“Again,” complains Bucky. “That’s the third time this month I’ve had to patch you up, Steve.”

“You didn’t hear what he was saying, Buck,” says Steve. “I couldn’t just walk away.”

Bucky rolls Steve’s left sleeve to look at the scrape on his wrist. If the scratch was any bigger, it would have cut straight across Steve’s Words. “You’re lucky this wasn’t worse.”

“Lucky my words are so tiny,” argues Steve. Bucky has an angry Cyrillic scrawl across the width of one shoulder. Last year he found someone to translate, but he hasn’t told anyone what the words mean. Steve doesn’t think it’s fair that Bucky has known about Steve’s _just be there_ almost his whole life and Steve doesn’t get to know what Bucky’s Words are, but maybe his soulmate is telling Bucky to go to hell or something.

Both of them are quiet for a moment except for a few hisses that escape at the worst of Steve’s injuries.

Steve breaks the silence. “Why do you think I’m not there, Bucky?”

“Not this again, Stevie, c’mon.”

“It’s a valid question, though!. _Just be there_ , what is that supposed to mean? What kind of thing is that, as the last thing she says to me? What kind of guy am I, to –“

“Who says it’s you, that doesn’t show up to wherever? Maybe this girl is the one who doesn’t show up, huh? Or maybe you’re both old and gray and she’s talking about meeting in the great beyond or something? Let it go, Steve. You and I both know you wouldn’t disappoint a dame if you could help it. You got nothing to prove.”

Steve looks at his Words and sighs.

* * *

 

Peggy Carter is an Agent, not a _lady_ , and she walks with her head held high and takes no prisoners and has a mean right hook.

One of the SSR recruits sasses her. Muffled chuckles ring out from the others. She needs to make an example of him. She hands “Gilmore Hodge, your majesty” her clipboard and knocks him to the ground.

Only one of the recruits is smiling now, and he’s not trying to hide it. He’s the shortest man in the line-up and he’s beaming right at her.

Peggy suppresses the urge to grin back.

* * *

 

Steve Rogers is terrible with women. He’s full of nerves, anticipating the procedure, and a bit light headed from not being allowed food or drink the night before, but he can’t blame the way he acts around the beautiful Agent Carter on all that. Bucky would never let him live it down.

The car ride seems awkward, with both of them staring straight ahead. He breaks the ice by pointing out all the places in this neighborhood where he’d been beaten up. Agent Carter doesn’t look impressed.

“Did you have something against running away?”

“You start running, they never let you stop,” he says. “You stand up, you push back…they can’t say no forever, right?”

Her face softens a bit. “I know a little of what that’s like,” she tells him. “To have every door shut in your face.”

“I guess I just don’t know why you’d want to join the Army if you were a beautiful dame.” The line of her mouth goes hard again. “Or a…Woman. Agent! Not a dame. You are beautiful, but…“

He trails off. She stares at him. “You have no idea how to talk to a woman, do you?”

He smiles and answers honestly. “I think this is the longest conversation I’ve had with one. Women aren’t exactly lining up to dance with a guy they might step on.”

She frowns. “You must have danced.”

“Well, asking a woman to dance always seemed so terrifying. And the past few years, it just didn’t seem to matter that much. I figured I’d wait.”

“For what?”

“The right partner.”

Agent Carter’s smile might be the prettiest thing Steve has ever seen. She doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the car ride, but he’s suddenly a lot less nervous.

* * *

 

Peggy Carter is tired and damp and determined. She finds Steve hiding from the rain after his Captain America show. She looks at the back of his head and suppresses the urge to smile, just like she did on the day they met. She imagines she feels a sort of warmth tingling about her forearm.

Steve has Words, too, Peggy knows. She caught a glimpse when he undressed for the serum procedure, and they were still on his wrist when he came out of Howard’s VitaRay machine. Steve’s wrist would have to be right in front of her eyes to make out the Words, and Peggy is reminded of all the years her schoolteachers told her to _write bigger, Margaret, you’ll have eye strain before you’re twenty, and how am I supposed to grade these scribbles?_

Even if the Words on Steve’s wrist belong to Peggy, it hardly matters, not now at least. They both have work to do. Plenty of time to dance when the war is over.

“Hello, Steve.”

Steve obviously isn’t expecting to see her. “Hi.”

Peggy has heard all about “America’s New Hope,” but dressed as Captain America, Steve looks smaller than he had when they first met. He sketches himself as a dancing monkey, and tells himself it’s better than being a lab rat. Her heart sinks. She was never any good at pep talks.

“You were meant for more than this, you know,” she tries.

An ambulance gives her something else to talk about. She tells Steve the fate of the 107th, and he springs back to life.

“C’mon!”

She watches Colonel Phillips shut Steve down. Whoever Barnes is, he is not going to get a rescue mission. She sees Steve’s spark of determination grow stronger instead of going away, and she follows him as he gathers what little gear he has.

“What are you going to do, walk to Austria?”

He asks her if she meant that he was meant for more, and tells her to let him go.

“I can do more than that,” she tells him. Peggy has always been more about actions than words. She works best when she has tasks, a goal. Devising a strategy to rescue Steve’s friend is much more her speed than trying to comfort him. She smiles as the plan comes together in her head. Howard Stark, she remembers, owes her a favor.

* * *

 

Steve Rogers is alone.

Bucky is –

Bucky –

Steve Rogers is alone. Steve Rogers, apparently, can’t get drunk.

He makes a valiant effort, anyway. The pub he finds himself in may have been the victim of an air raid, but most of the bottles behind the bar are in good shape. The all clear has yet to sound, so there is nobody to stop him from drinking the remaining stock.

For the first time, he curses Dr. Erskine’s serum.

Steve doesn’t know how to be anything but half of SteveandBucky. He looks at his wrist. The two of them had been the only people in their class, growing up, who had Words. He wonders when Bucky met his soulmate, when he heard his Words. Why he didn’t tell Steve. The Commandos hadn’t spent any amount of time working with Soviet troops, but Steve was sometimes called away from his men. Maybe they met then. Maybe it was before that, before Steve came overseas, before the 107th got captured. How long had Bucky spent walking around with his Words ringing in his head, knowing the end was near and following Steve into danger anyway?

He sets the bottle back on the table. He hears Peggy step around broken glass and plaster.

She tells him it wasn’t his fault. Tells him to allow Bucky the dignity of his choice.

Steve stares into his empty glass and vows to burn Hydra to the ground. Peggy frowns but doesn’t argue.

“You won’t be alone,” she promises.

* * *

 

Peggy Carter is standing next to Colonel Phillips, waiting for Steve to come back. She’s never been any good at waiting. It isn’t easy, not knowing what was happening on that plane.

“Come in, this is Captain Rogers, do you hear me?”

Peggy pushes Jim Morita out of the way, tells Steve to give her his coordinates so that she can find him someplace to land. She can get Howard on the line, they can work it out, they can –

“There’s not gonna be a safe landing.” The plane is headed for New York. “I’ve got to put her in the water.”

He tells her that a lot of people are going to die, if he doesn’t force the plane down now, while it’s in the middle of nowhere. “Peggy,” he says. “This is my choice.”

Peggy sucks in a breath. She can’t argue with her own words, and Steve knows that, damn him.

“I’m gonna need a rain check on that dance.”

“All right,” she forces out. “A week next Saturday, at the Stock Club.”

“You got it.”

* * *

 

Steve Rogers is terrified, and he clings to Peggy’s voice.

“Eight o’clock on the dot, don’t you dare be late,” she orders.

“I still don’t know how to dance.”

“I’ll show you how,” she says. He voice breaks. “Just be there.”

 _Just be there._ No. _No._ He’s supposed to have more _time._ Even if this is the way he goes out, this isn’t fair, they are supposed to get the chance to say –

 _Looks like you were wrong, Bucky,_ Steve thinks to himself. _It was me all along. I_ am _the one who doesn’t make it there._

He knows he’s running out of time. He forces down the panic.

“We’ll have the band play something slow. I’d hate to step on your –“

* * *

 

Peggy Carter is a professional, and her mask does not crack while on missions. She grins through the pain, and draws nylons on her legs, and paints her lips bloody red. Her aim is as good as any soldier. Nobody sees her cry or calls her weak.

Bossy Peggy Carter, her cousins used to tease, won’t even let her soulmate finish his last words to her.

Peggy Carter’s heart is breaking.

_I’d hate to step on your --_

“Steve?”

There’s static on the line. She lets out a sob.

“…Steve?”

There was never going to be anything else.

* * *

Steve Rogers is alone.

Steve Rogers is really, _truly_ , alone.

 “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” he tells the man who just told Steve that he missed _seventy years_. He takes a deep breath and takes another look around. He looks down at his wrist. “Yeah, I just…”

_Just be there._

“I had a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> [natromanovna](http://natromanovna.tumblr.com/) requested "For the fic prompt: soulmate au steve/peggy? You can do it anyway you like but maybe where they have a matching mark of some kind or they don't see color until they meet?"
> 
> So I decided to be a terrible person and make it so they don't know for sure until they speak their last words to one another.
> 
> I know they technically have more words in Winter Soldier. I'm ignoring that.
> 
> I hope you like this!
> 
> [Visit me on tumblr!](http://showgirlsteve.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Kudos are great, I love you forever for comments.


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